Today’s Podcast
Today’s Bible reading plan:
Read it in a year – Psalms 93-95
see the whole year’s plan [here](http://www.bible-reading.com/bible-plan.pdf)
Today’s Devotional
Mark 8:34-9:1
Jesus: If any one of you wants to follow Me, you will have to give yourself up to God’s plan, take up your cross, and do as I do. For any one of you who wants to be rescued will lose your life, but any one of you who loses your life for My sake and for the sake of this good news will be liberated. Really, what profit is there for you to gain the whole world and lose yourself in the process? What can you give in exchange for your life? If you are ashamed of Me and of what I came to teach to this adulterous and sinful generation, then the Son of Man will be ashamed of you when He comes in the glory of His Father along with the holy messengers at the final judgment.
Truly, some of you who are here now will not experience death before you see the kingdom of God coming in glory and power.
What do Jesus’ words mean for us today?
I did another one of those quick Google searches today after reading these words of Jesus. His question about what can you give in exchange for your life made me think about the number of suicides that take place in our country every day. So I looked up the number. The websites admit that the number is probably not completely accurate. Some of those that commit suicide are probably not captured in the statistics represented in figures we get in the category called suicide given to us by those who perform autopsies and report those things to the authorities across the country.
You might wonder why someone wouldn’t report correctly, but there are a lot of reasons. If a person runs their car into a tree, is it an accident or suicide? The coroner doesn’t know and will more than likely call it an accident. If someone takes the wrong combination of prescription medications and dies in their sleep, is it an accident or suicide? The coroner often doesn’t know and will more than likely call it an accident. Often only the person who commits the act knows the answer and most often, the one writing the cause of death on the death certificate will shy away from calling a death a suicide because of the impact on the family when a death is declared a suicide.
You see, most insurance companies do not pay life insurance and sometimes even related health insurance costs to the beneficiaries if death is a result of suicide, so the family instantly suffers significant financial burdens. The family also suffers the pain, emotional, and psychological stigma that goes along with suicides. “Why didn’t I see it? What could I have done to prevent it? Did I contribute to it? Could I have done anything different over the last days or weeks or months to make him or her feel different about themselves to stop this senseless act? Am I or my children now predisposed to follow in their footsteps? How do I prevent it from happening again in my family?”
What is the number of people who throw their life away in desperation every day? That quick Google search says its about 117 a day in the United States. 117 decide there is nothing else to live for and the only way out is to just stop living. They love themselves little enough and feel others love them little enough that taking their own life is the best way to solve their problem. What a tragedy.
Jesus talks about the value of life. What can we give in exchange for our life? He, the creator of all things, says there is nothing more valuable than life. We could gain the whole world and it would not be worth our life. That’s how valuable one person, one soul, one life is to God. Somewhere along the line in the last several years we quit teaching our children just how valuable life is. Somehow we stopped valuing life as the precious commodity God created.
We can blame that failure on the violent television shows and movies or the violent video games our kids play. We can blame the failure on nature of the comics they read or the books they are exposed to in school and the literature that’s popular. But the truth is the failure comes as a result of what we teach our children and grandchildren in our homes as parents and grandparents. It’s the truths we pass down from generation to generation and instill in them by living those truths in front of them each day that teach them life, every life is worth more than all the wealth in all the world.
How do we fail in that effort? What do you tell your children about terrorists? They are still souls Jesus died for? How do you talk about gang members on the street? Jesus died for them. What do you say when your elementary school-aged child brings home the slang titles of a different race? God created them, too. Each person on earth is created by God. He died on a cross for their sins just as He died on the cross for yours and He died on the cross for mine.
Until we recognize the value of every life and begin to teach our children and their children the value of every life, we will continue to see society throw lives away. It might be by suicides or murders or abuse of children and the elderly or negligence of a race or socioeconomic group, but we will throw some group of people away as unimportant. But Jesus thinks every life is so important and so valuable that He gave His own life to redeem each one. What is each life worth to Him? Everything including His own.
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